Hello! So today I wanted to chat about an event I went to recently, Commercial Work VS Creative Passion set up and organised by SheSaysUK with partnership from Major Players. There was an all-female line up of speakers including Business Artist Lola Lansa who ran the discussion with Illustrator Tegan Price, Photographer Catherine Losing and Designer Sadie Clayton sharing what it's like to be commissioned and working freelance, while Saatchis&Saatchi Creative Director Fabiana Xavier and Creative Consultant Sarah Williams gave insight from the side of helping and/or working with freelancers.
The evening was largely about how freelancers can work in order to produce commercial work that helps them work on passion projects, while also making decent money. But the majority of the speakers also had either a part time or full time job on the side to support this so they spoke about the balance of that and how to make it work as well.
As someone who does work full time but also enjoys illustration and lettering on the side it was such a great talk to go through and I came away from it with lots of tips and advice about how to turn this interest into a way to make some money on the side through commissions. It also made me think about this years 100 day project and how I can look at what I'm creating and see if there's illustrations I'm interested in creating can be targeted to companies, brands or a specific social or environmental issue.
From the evening I wrote almost 3 and a half pages of notes which is mainly what I wanted to share in this blog post. There was so many interesting questions asked and a lot of great points that the speakers came out with that I wanted to pass on some of that wisdom. A lot of it does direct mainly to people working as freelance or those who take on some sort of commissions but I think there's a lot of ways that you can alter them to work in an agency or in-house setting as well.
- Don't get an agent until you can't handle your entire workload yourself.
- But also no one person is good at everything. So employ or get help from people that can ease the stress on the things you aren’t good at and/or don’t know how to do
- Creative thinking is becoming the crucial point in the industry rather than just skills or knowledge. (This was from Sadie Clayton, a fashion designer who gone on to create sculptures and also reached out to work with car companies and helped produce work with new technologies.)
- In relation to why pursuing passion projects was a positive thing, they felt that when working full time, either in an agency setting or as a freelancer it helps you grow as ac creative and helps hone in your skills you might not have the opportunity to do so otherwise.
- Use social media and emails to get at the forefront of the people you want to work with. Tag or follow them everywhere. And when you send emails and make sure to follow up if/when you don't hear anything. But, also do it when they say they don't have anything available at the moment, check in a few months to see if the situation has changed.
- But when you are contacting people, make sure your intentions are clear. Ask your questions, share your ideas. Basically do what you need to in order to get them invested in your goal.
- When it comes to getting paid for work, always ask the client what their budget is instead of them asking you for a day/hour rate. But if it does come to you telling them a price, always make it higher than your gut and you can roll back the price but reduce the creative input they have and/or the way changes can be done to the work.
- If you do work full time, either freelance or full time, think about whether the work you do for that money is actually satisfying. If not, then how can you make it so? And if so, is it pushing your skills and creativity to the best it can be? Does it stay true to your own personal creative expression than just the agency you're employed at and the clients you produce work for.
- And lastly...
One of the major points of the evening was, we, as creatives need to stop being so god-damn hard on ourselves!
Hopefully you've found these points as helpful as I have! There's so many events like this in London and I'm really keen to head to more of them when I can. So be sure this won't be the last post like this if my social calendar has anything to do with it!
* Header image for this post comes from the SheSaysUK website.
